by Neil Bullock
I grin and wipe at my eyes. “All right. Well, Mitch is an old guy and he seems pretty nice, but he’s convinced the train is taking us to see God.”
Kyle’s eyes widen. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. He was involved in a car accident. He thinks he died, and this is how he gets to heaven. Trouble is, it doesn’t fit with our stories. I didn’t die. You didn’t die. Mitch’s wife did die, but she’s not on the train with him. Maybe she was destined for… the other place.”
Kyle snorts. “You’re not supposed to say things like that about the dead.”
I feel my traitorous cheeks turn red and I force a smile. “Yeah, well. The other person is Rona. She’s… weird. Like a sweet old lady who doesn’t realize what she’s saying or how it could be perceived as irritating.”
“Not a fan?”
I shrug. “Eh. She’s okay, I guess. In small doses.” Thinking about it, Kyle is the only person on board I can see myself becoming genuine friends with. Mitch is nice enough, but I don’t feel much of a connection, and something about him feels a little off. I’m not sure what to make of Rona.
The train jolts and lurches suddenly. I fall to the side, bracing myself with my arm. Kyle hits the wall, but not hard. He looks bewildered when he recovers, but I think I know what’s happening.
The train is stopping again.
nine
The Outside (1)
“Shit,” I hiss, standing up.
Kyle stands, too, but seems to be looking frantically around the room for some kind of threat. “What’s happening?”
“You said you wanted to help, right? Want to start right now?” I flash him a desperate, hopeful smile.
He looks confused, but nods. “Sure, of course.”
“There’s a lot I haven’t had a chance to tell you. Did you try the door at the rear of this car?”
He nods again. “Yeah, it’s locked.”
“Right. But there are carriages behind us. I saw them out of the window when the train was rounding a corner. I was going to try to get into carriage eleven – that’s the one behind us – the next time the train stopped. So… want to come with?”
He hesitates for a fraction of a second, but then beams and says, “Sure.”
“We might get trapped outside. I don’t know what’s out there, but you’re a wanted man.”
He bobs his head. “Let’s not get trapped then.”
I laugh. “Which doors did you use to get on?”
“The ones at the front of the passenger car ahead of us.”
We hurry out of his room and I grab my water bottle as we leave, then we make our way quickly to the front of carriage nine. Once in the vestibule, we begin the agonizing wait. I can see a city in the distance, but it’s not one I can identify from its stunted skyline. The land around it is almost unfeasibly flat and tinted orange. The road system forms a grid, which I think means this is the Americas somewhere, possibly Utah or Arizona. I don’t see any traffic on the roads.
“We’re still a long way up,” Kyle remarks. He’s standing right next to the door, peering out the window.
I stay where I am, back to the wall between the noticeboard and the door into car eight. “Can you see what’s below us?”
“Whole lotta nothin’, looks like.”
“I guess that’s a good thing.”
We’ve almost stopped moving forward and haven’t started descending, and I’m wondering if we’re just going to hover here then move on, like we’re waiting at some nonsensical signal. I will the train to descend. It hangs stubbornly in the air for a long moment, but finally starts to sink to the ground and I silently rejoice. Maybe I’m one step closer to figuring out something real about the train.
“We need to be quick,” I say, moving next to Kyle. “I don’t know how long the train will stay put once it’s stopped.”
Finally, we reach ground level. Kyle and I share a nervous glance and I turn my attention to the buttons that control the doors.
Come on, light up!
I’m about to give up hope when the Open button illuminates and I smash my palm into it, eager not to lose the opportunity. The doors slide open in front of me. I take a deep breath and I’m overwhelmed by the smells of life. Flowers and trees and pollution and soil and everything else. It’s like I’ve never smelled anything except the inside of this fucking train. I can feel the breeze on my skin, taste the fresh air. Kyle looks over at me, grins uncertainly, and we climb the short ladder to the ground.
Then we’re running alongside the train. I’m vaguely aware that the line on the outside is teal, but I can’t comment on it. I’m panting. Kyle is several strides ahead of me, but neither of us stops.
We reach the start of carriage ten.
I suddenly realize I can think about time again. I want to call out to Kyle, to ask him what year he boarded, and to tell him when I did. But if I call out, he’s going to stop. If he stops, we may miss our opportunity.
We reach carriage eleven.
I’ve been terrified that we’ll have to turn back, that the buttons on the outside of the train won’t be illuminated, or that the doors will be locked, but I’m relieved when Kyle reaches the entrance, slaps the open button and the doors slide apart. He climbs aboard, turns, then helps me up. The doors slide shut immediately, the open button dimming to black.
“That was lucky,” Kyle says breathlessly.
I nod, but it almost feels like the train was waiting for us to get back on. As if confirming this, it starts to move as I stand there panting. We take some time to recover as we watch the world outside become gradually more distant.
“Do you remember what color that line on the outside of the train was when you boarded?” I ask when I can speak.
“Kind of reddish-brown. It was blueish just now. What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure. It was white when it came for me.”
“Maybe it’s, like, each color is a different stop along the route.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “That’s… I hadn’t thought of that.” I start to wonder if it might be possible to catalog the locations, try to get some idea about each one, then if we revisit one that we like the look of, maybe we can get off.
“Come on,” Kyle says. “I’m dying to see what’s through that door.”
I grin. Me too.
ten
Lara
What’s through the door is not nearly as nice as the front half of the train. It’s not exactly Kyle’s prison cell, but it’s also not what I’d call luxurious. The passenger compartment has the same basic configuration – sixteen chairs in total, four tables, all spaced far apart – but everything feels cheaper and looks less comfortable. The walls are plain white, the lights provided by fluorescent tubing recessed into the ceiling behind plastic panels. The carpet is black edged with gray, basically the same as the fabric covering the meager cushioning on the chairs. Something about it feels more correct than the furnishings up front, though. The black of the carpet and other fabric, the grays, the whites. It reflects the train’s own external color scheme, and that of the scary shit it travels through most of the time. A world in monochrome. Right on cue, the daylight outside is replaced with said scary shit, and I realize that there are no curtains in here.
“Oh, fuck that,” I say, wondering if I could pull the carpet up and fasten it over the windows somehow.
Kyle is staring out of the window closest to him. “God, it’s… it’s...”
“Try not to look at it.”
It takes him some effort to meet my gaze, but when he does, he nods. “Come on, let’s look around.” He strides past me in the direction of the rear vestibule. When he’s five feet from the door, it opens, and he stumbles back against one of the chairs. A woman steps into the carriage. She has long reddish-brown hair parted to one side and tucked behind her ears. She stops when she sees us and her expression morphs from one of hopeless resignation to one of frantic wide-eyed
wonder in a split second. She darts forward, stopping in front of Kyle. “Oh, my God!” she yells.
As she looks Kyle over, I realize she isn’t a woman. She can’t be older than sixteen. She looks past Kyle at me, then hurries over. “Oh, my God! Are you… you’re real, right? I’m not imagining you?”
I’m startled into a smile. “We’re real. Who are you?”
She casts a glance back at Kyle, who is looking perplexed. Shyly, she tells us, “My name is Lara.”
“Hi, Lara,” I say. “I’m Eden. That’s Kyle.”
She laughs as if this is the funniest thing she’s ever heard, then claps a hand over her mouth, eyes bulging. “Sorry. I thought I was alone. Except for the ghosts. You’re really real?”
Kyle walks closer. “The what now?”
The girl spins to face him. “The ghosts. I don’t know if that’s what they are really, but it’s what I call them. They make noises when I’m trying to sleep. And when I’m not. But mostly when I am. Actually, I don’t seem to do much else.”
I blink at this, wondering how long this girl has been on board with nothing but spooky noises for company. “You have a room?”
She nods. “Where did you come from?”
I consider how best to answer that while I look her up and down. She’s painfully thin, but beautiful. Her heart shaped face carries a faint spray of freckles. I always wanted freckles as a kid. She stares at me with earnest dark eyes. “We’re from the front half of the train. This is carriage eleven. The door into ten is locked.” I point toward the front of the carriage unnecessarily.
She looks around, as if searching for someone or something to verify this version of reality. When she finds nothing, she eyes me skeptically. “So how did you get here?”
“We went outside when the train stopped just now,” Kyle says in his deep, calming voice.
Lara frowns, appearing to consider this, then nods, satisfied. “Do you guys have rooms?”
I nod. “We do, but they’re in the front of the train.” I hadn’t considered that we’d lose access to our rooms, but hopefully one of the empty ones might be habitable. I wish I’d brought my violin, but the only thing I have from my room is my bottle of water.
“Well, I can show you around back here if you like. It’ll be nice to have some company. Come on, I’ll show you my room. It’s ridiculous!” She leads us through carriage twelve, which is another dining car, but one which would look at home next to Kyle’s prison cell. It’s sparsely decorated with metal tables and chairs and not a lot else. There’s no bar here, and no sign of a kitchen. I wonder if it works the same way as the other one, but Lara is at the far end before Kyle and I are even halfway across.
Carriage thirteen is a clone of eleven.
Fourteen is interesting, and I initially assume it’s our destination. It’s a sleeper car in the same tradition as mine, but the decor is all white. The walls are clad in white plastic, the floor in white carpet tiles. Each of the white doors carries a white plastic sign with bold, black letters. Every sign has a name, though I don’t have time to read many before Lara is in the next car. The ones I do read are only first names, not full names like the ones at the front.
Fifteen is another car with crates, but this one is stacked floor to ceiling. There’s barely any room to move and at a couple of points, we need to climb over a low wall of boxes. Lara does this with the ease of someone who’s had a lot of practice, and I wonder again how long she’s been on board.
The next carriage is our destination. Carriage sixteen.
It’s another sleeper car, like the last one. Only one of the doors bears a name, and it’s the first on the right.
Lara Mae Parker
She giggles as she slides a key into the lock and pushes the door open. “Come in, won’t you?” she says excitedly, giving a theatrical sweep of her hand as if welcoming us to a party she’s been planning for months.
“Thanks,” I say as I pass her. I stop in my tracks when I’m inside.
It’s a girl’s bedroom. A very girly girl’s bedroom. If I had to guess, it’s decorated for a six-year-old who is obsessed with Disney princesses and My Little Pony and… pink. Everywhere I look is pink. Pink mesh fabric hangs down over her bed to form a canopy. I watch as she dives through an opening and lands on the mattress, then turns to face us.
“It’s not quite right,” she says. “There was different stuff at home, but it’s a pretty good match.”
I stop gazing around for long enough to look at her and ask, “How do you mean?”
“I had all this stuff in my room as a kid. Not anymore, of course.”
I wonder again about Mitch and Rona’s rooms. I wonder about the vacant sleeper compartments I haven’t been inside yet. It seems like everyone’s assigned room is at least based on their actual bedroom. I stare at a Care Bears poster on the wall behind the bed. Owing to my own obsession as a kid, this is the first thing that’s allowed me to guess at something related to time. It’s an original Care Bears poster, not from the reboots. I don’t know the year, because that’s a concept with no meaning, but I know the Care Bears ended shortly before I was born. I watched it on VHS. Does that mean Lara is from a similar time period, or is it simply that she was a retro child? Perhaps this isn’t as helpful as I’d thought.
“Pretty cool though,” I say. “I loved the Care Bears when I was younger. Who’s your favorite?”
Lara looks down as she says, almost apologetically, “Funshine Bear.” When nobody else speaks, she looks up, glances from me to Kyle and back to me, then apparently encouraged, adds, “I wanted to be him! He laughs and jokes all the time and I…” She trails off.
“I always liked Good Luck Bear. Pretty shade of green,” I say. I notice Kyle in the corner and initially mistake his expression for bafflement. “Not a fan?” I ask him, and suddenly he looks like he’s in pain. I turn back to Lara in a hurry. “Can you tell us how you got here, Lara?”
She sighs and adjusts her position on the bed. “My dad. I’m the youngest of three sisters. Our mom died when I was really young. I don’t even remember her. Samantha – my oldest sister – left home as soon as she could. I was devastated because I didn’t understand why she was leaving me. It was only when Paige did the same thing that I understood. Dad… he takes his… frustrations out on the oldest daughter. I had no idea he knocked them both around a lot, belittled them, bullied them, until I was the only one left and he started doing it to me.”
“Oh, Lara,” I say, but she continues as if I’ve not spoken.
“I grew to resent my sisters for their weakness. Why did they let it go on for so long? Why was their solution to leave and let the next sister deal with it? After a while of being the sister on the receiving end, I kind of understood. Whatever confidence or happiness I gained was systematically knocked out of me whenever my dad had a bad day, or when he drank too much, or whatever it was. If you can’t summon the will to fight for yourself, how can you be expected to fight for your sisters?” She stops talking and shakes her head. “I still resent them, though. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do. I tried to ask them for help, but they wouldn’t. As much as they hated him for what he’d done to them, they weren’t willing to see him in prison or whatever. They thought my mom’s death was the reason he was so screwed up and he didn’t deserve to be punished for what it had done to him. I was scared they wouldn’t back me up if I went to the cops on my own, though, so I didn’t. I figured I’d just deal with it until I could leave home, too. I think I wasn’t far off… I can’t remember how old I am. Is that weird?”
I shake my head. “No, honey. It’s something about the train.”
Lara nods, apparently satisfied with that half-assed explanation. She goes on, “The day I got on the train was the day I finally got sick of it. I was supposed to be going out with a friend, but dad had dumped a stack of dirty dishes in the sink and expected me to wash them. I refused. He hit me, so I hit him back. Hard enough to knock hi
m over. I didn’t mean to, though I’m not exactly sorry. He’s getting old and I’m probably as strong as he is now. I realized quickly that the day when I could finally leave home had arrived without warning. I ran. I got to the street and this train was waiting. I got on. I didn’t even think it was strange until it started flying.”
When she’s finished, she looks down at her hands and fidgets. I walk over to the bed and perch on the edge. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
She looks at me. “It is what it is. I didn’t have to take it nearly as long as Sam did. For a while, after Paige left, I thought I deserved whatever I got. I think I realized something my sisters never did, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I didn’t deserve any of it. They both got out, sure, but neither of them is doing great on their own. I think he broke them. But everything my dad did says nothing about me, and everything about him. So, fuck him. I’m glad I got away.”
I nod emphatically. “You’re a smart kid.” On impulse, I put an arm around Lara and pull her close for a second. She tenses initially, but relaxes into it quickly. I glance over at Kyle, who’s looking like he wants to smash something. I can’t blame him.
Lara pulls away from me. “So, how did you both end up here?”
eleven
Kyle
To my surprise, Kyle begins to speak, and he visibly struggles with the words.
“I was on death row,” he says. I feel Lara shift next to me, and Kyle goes on, “Eden already knew that, and she’s already shown me more compassion than, well, pretty much everyone I ever met.” I blink at this, but hold Kyle’s gaze. “What she doesn’t know is why I was there.”
“It’s going to sound like a cliché, but I never had much. I dropped out of high school and took whatever dead-end job I could find. My family never had any money, and I was determined to stop leeching off of them as soon as I was able. Eventually I got a job in a supermarket and started to work my way up. I was doing okay. It wasn’t a glamorous job and it didn’t pay that well, but it was steady money, and more than any of my family had when I was growing up. I could finally help them out, you know? It felt good.